Can machines actually want things? Can they crave power, or scariest of all: Can they acquire the will to survive? In our latest Qualia column, writer Amanda Gefter explores some of the deeper questions behind our fear of total AI domination. www.quantamagazine.org/why-do-we-te...
It's not just a life sentence -- it's the quiet realization that there's no going back.
Amazing!!!
Why three "demons" still keep physicists up at night. (Spoiler: they're associated with Maxwell, Laplace, and Loschmidt.) My latest for @newscientist.com:
www.newscientist.com/article/2502... #physics
(I thought it would be fun to write that in the voice of chatGPT but now I just feel dirty.)
It's not just bad--it's painful.
Honestly? This piece on AI's writing nails it. That overwrought, manic voice that echoes between man and machine.
Delve in...if you dare.
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/m...
Oooh this looks great
Thank you! If you're looking to read Bohr in his own words, my most marked up books are Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature and Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge. They definitely give a sense of how he thinks and what themes come up again and again
And before you @ me with "there is no single Copenhagen interpretation," I know, I know. Here it means "the gist of what Bohr and Heisenberg agreed on" 😅
Quantum interpretations may be empirically equivalent, but that doesn't mean their die hard fans don't enjoy trash talking the other teams. My own take on the spectator sport, for @nautil.us nautil.us/reality-exis...
What happens when you take a handful of scientists and philosophers, stick them in a 500-year-old church in the middle of Tuscany, and ask them to redefine "intelligence"? I had the transformative experience of finding out. nautil.us/what-is-inte...
It's amazing!
Graphite rendition of Peter Putnam. First portrait I made in a little while. The likeness is not 100%, but the next one will be better
Just a first quick little graphite sketch of Peter Putnam (@nautil.us knows who I’m talking about 🤩)
#sketch #portrait #sketchbook #peterputnam #graphite #drawing #fanart #philosophy
📹 Philosopher Ezquiel Di Paolo discusses the idea that individuality is formed through, not against, the collective. #loveandphilosophy #philosophy #power
youtube.com/shorts/LViHD...
In the summer of 1925, Werner Heisenberg retreated to Helgoland in the North Sea and reemerged with the first full-fledged version of quantum mechanics. A century later, physicists returned to Helgoland to take stock. @walkingthedot.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/its-a-mess-a...
A historic marker that reads: Near this site lived Peter Putnam, a Princeton-trained physicist, who worked as a publisher, philosopher, philanthropist, and janitor. In 1979, he conceived, commissioned and funded the Gay Liberation Monument, which is now a centerpiece of The Stonewall Historic Site in NYC. He also donated his family's fortune to the Nature Conservancy leading to the preservation of Louisiana's Little Pecan Island.
The LGBTQ+ Archives Project of Louisiana has just placed a historic marker near Peter Putnam's former home on East Main St. in Houma. From dying anonymously on that stretch of road 4 decades ago to being publicly honored there for his radical life and brilliant work...what a beautiful thing.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEe5...
I've come to believe that, if we're lucky, we are tasked and entrusted with stories - stories that confound us, that elude us, that are bigger than us, that change us and then outlive us, that we have to fight to keep them alive by telling them, living them, and sharing them while we can.
This obituary gives a wonderful account of Bob's life and values. I hope you'll read it, and Putnam's story, as well, which Bob guarded and preserved and continues to keep alive today.
www.berkeleyside.org/2025/07/22/r...
When the article came out last month, I sent Fuller the link. He was elated. Overjoyed. Relieved. Shortly after, he suffered a stroke, and last week, he passed away.
I needed to get Putnam's ideas out there because otherwise they would simply be lost, and I needed to do it for people like Fuller who'd kept the flame alive. "This is the last second chance there will ever be," Fuller told me. It was a feeling that shook him (and me in turn) to the core.
Fuller was never able to convince the world to look at Putnam's work. And it haunted him. “My basic upset is, I feel somehow I failed to get his stuff out there,” Fuller said. As I wrote in the piece, his regret was my inheritance.
...I have never in my life met anyone who would feel out and give themselves to the power in other people’s ideas, with no egotistic block…They are extraordinary qualities that made you able to do that for me. I would have done nothing at all had it not been for you.” But despite his best efforts,
He championed Putnam's work when no one else could understand it, when Putnam himself could barely explain it. Putnam wrote to Fuller: “There is the very real miracle of yours being able to realize I was not just a mad crackpot and that this chatter had a core...
People like Robert Works Fuller, who was the first person to whom Putnam ever explained his theory. Fuller was a physicist who had worked out the mathematics of wormholes with John Wheeler. He immediately recognized the genius in Putnam and became Putnam's apprentice and sounding board.
I recently wrote a story about Peter Putnam, a forgotten physicist-turned-janitor with a groundbreaking theory of the mind, for @nautil.us. I was able to piece together Putnam's incredible story thanks to a few people who kept the ember of his work glowing for decades after his tragic death.
I think a lot these days about the ways in which we are the keepers of other people's stories - the weight of that, the privilege, the responsibility. Which is why I want to tell you about Bob Fuller. 🧵
Great book.